


The Demon-mania of Witches : Book 2

by Threbony



Series: The Demon-mania of Witches | De la demonomanie des sorciers [2]
Category: De la démonomanie des sorciers | On the Demon-Mania of Witches - Jean Bodin
Genre: 1580, Book 2, From French to English, Gen, Magic, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Translation, Warnings May Change, Witch - Freeform, Witchcraft, magick, old french, sorcery, volume 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26409274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Threbony/pseuds/Threbony
Summary: The second book of the 1580 French work ,"The demon-mania of Witches," or "De la demonomanie des sorciers.ChaptersOn Magick in general (0%)On tacit invocations of evil spirits (0%)On express invocations of evil spirits (0%)On those who renounce God by express comment, and if they are transported in body by demons ()%)On the astral projection of witches, and the ordinary dating they have with demons (62.5%)On Lycanthropy and if the Spirits can make people beautiful. (0%)If witches copulate with demons (0%)If witches can send diseases, sterility, hail, and tempests, and if they can kill people and beasts (0%)
Series: The Demon-mania of Witches | De la demonomanie des sorciers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1919500
Kudos: 1





	1. I.	On Magick in general

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [De la demonomanie des sorciers](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/682366) by Jean Bodin. 



Placeholder chapter. Not translated.


	2. II.	On tacit invocations of evil spirits

Placeholder chapter. Not translated.


	3. III.	On express invocations of evil spirits

placeholder chapter. Not translated.


	4. IV.	On those who renounce God by express comment, and if they are transported in body by demons

Placeholder.


	5. V.	On the ecstasis/astral projection of witches, and the ordinary dating they have with demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The author says that astral projection is a very real thing, as well as supernatural beings (i.e. angels, demons, gods) having the ability to magickally transport mortal physical bodies. He says the soul is immortal. He lists some examples of people who have astral projected and how they proved it. He briefly mentions a few witch trials which ended in, unsurprisingly, burning the witches. He very much believes that people from northern areas, like Scandinavia, are all witches and devil worshipers. (He believes anyone who doesn't worship the christian god worships devils.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This man decided that halfway through this chapter, he was gonna change things up a bit with absolutely no warning before hand. Nothing indicated that he was about to do this: In some words, if there was an 'n' before a vowel, he would just drop the n and put an accent on the vowel. For example, and I shit you not, here is something he did.  
> He took the word 'quand,' which means 'when,' and turned it into 'quád.'  
> And he's not even consistent. Like, he writes 'aucú,' and two lines later he writes 'aucun.' Why? He also loves run on sentences. I had to break up his sentences so they made sense, and I had to separate the paragraphs myself. This man is just so frustrating.

Completion Rate: 5/8 pages

On the ecstasis (astral projection) of witches, and the ordinary dating they have with demons*

*Ecstasis: "to be or stand outside oneself, a removal to elsewhere." Basically, it is astral projection.

*They didn’t have a specific term for astral projection back then, or at least not one that the author knew. To explain astral projection, Bodin calls it ecstasis, which he explains as delighting the soul/delighting in the soul.

Please click on the numbers in [brackets] throughout the text to see footnotes that further explain parts of the passage.

What we have said of the astral projection[1] of witches’ souls and the magickal transportation of their bodies, and the experiences so frequent, and so memorable, show plain as day, and make contact with the finger and the eye, the error of those who have written that the astral projection and magickal transportation of witches is imaginary, and that it is nothing else than a trance-like vision, and bring as an example, Ezekiel’s vision. He was enraptured with the spirit of Babylon in Jerusalem: which vision can be done as both a real separation from the soul and can be done without separation. But the Hebrews hold in their secret Theology that the Angel offered to God the souls of the broods by abstraction, allowing the man to remain alive. And in this regard, they allege the passage from Psalms 116 (summary of Psalms 116: the speaker asks the Lord to save them from the anguish of death. God saves them with salvation, they get to go to heaven. They say they will be the Lord’s servant because he saved them from a bad afterlife.): What it seems is that in Phaedo, Plato calls Death amusing[2]. But yet we must not deny the true occurrence of astral projection, which is done by good and bad spirits. We will give the example of Eli, and of Enoch, who were delighted in body, and of Habakkuk, who was carried in body by the Angel in the den of Lions. And if the real transportation of the body was not done with the examples that we have dictated, how could it be done, that the one from Loches flees, troubled, from its bed in the moors of Bordeaux, and the one from Lyon in Lorraine, the one from Plutarch of Greece in Crotona near Naples, where by necessity it is necessary to cross more than a hundred leagues of sea, and infinite others in similar cases.

Thomas Aquinas, Durand Herué, Bonaventure de Tarantaise, and Getal Odet who dealt with this question in the second book, distinction on chapter VIII of the Master of the sentences[3], formally hold the notion that the Devils transport bodies from place to place by their natural power. How much do I find rapture in ecstasis, which they say is much more admirable than bodily transport. And if the Devil has this power, as they confess, to delight the spirit out of the body, it is no easier to carry away the body and soul with neither distraction, nor division of the sane[4] part, than to distract and divide one or the other without dying. But how many very certain testimonies we have, and unmistakable demonstrations of the immortality of souls: if this seems to me to be the strongest and the greatest, and which may suffice being proved, as it has been by endless stories, judgments, recollections, confrontations, convictions, confessions, executions. It may, I say, be enough to convince all Epicureans and Atheists that the human spirit is of immortal essence. For the hypothesis of Aristotle in the second book of the Soul is by this means very well verified, and demonstrated in that he says that if the soul can do anything without the help of the body, it is immortal: and the other hypothesis is that the soul is immortal if it is separable from the body.

But the infidels, who believe in neither the power of God, nor the essence of spirits, say that what we call ‘Soul’ is a harmonious bond and universal form resulting from particular forms of humors[5]and other parts of the human body: which is a very heavy incongruity, to compose the form of man (which all philosophers confess to be pure and simple) from several forms. As for ecstasis[6], they say it is a melancholic sleep, by which the forces of the soul are buried, so that it seems that the person is dead. But this is ridiculous, since there are more Witches in Norway, the Baltics, and other Northern areas, than there are in the rest of the world, as Olaus the Great says: and seems that what Satan said in Iesaye/Jesaye/Iesaie/Jesaie,[7] “I will climb on the Aquilon and will be similar to God,” can be related to the power that Satan has mainly over the peoples of the North, who are very difamous Daemons and Witches, as in such a case by all Holy Scripture we read, that from Aquilon will come all evil. [he lists some bible verses]

Nevertheless, the people there are less melancholic than people who are under the sky, because they are generally all blons, or of cow’s hair[8]. They must therefore confess their ignorance: for Plutarch wrote of a man named Solens, and Pliny of a Hermotine Clazomenian, and Heredorus of a Procondese Atheist Philosopher, and they wrote that these people were so delighted in ecstasis, in astral projecting, that their bodies remained dead and insensible. So that the enemies of Hermotine, touching his body in this way, had killed and beaten him. Hierosme Cardan left in writing that he was ecstatically thrown out of his body when he wanted, without leaving any feeling in the body. All those who suffer this passion on a voluntary basis are Wizards. Cardan also confesses that his father had a Devil as a familiar for thirty years. Ordinarily, fathers who are witches tend fashion their children to delight in ecstasis. What does Virgil say in VI?[9] Of Aneid speaking of the Witch, which solved himself. Because to tell the truth, the vegetative soul, vital soul, and animal soul are still demonstrating that the senses, movement, and reason are linked.

We have a recent memory story of the natural Magick of a Neapolitan, who recounts having evidence of a Witch who rubbed grafts naked, then astral projected and left no feeling in the body, and three hours later returned to his body, recounting news from several different countries, which were proven to be accurate.[10] It is true that the author of the book that deserves to be burned has the means to practice it. Now Satan uses it with those who do not want to be discovered, or for the size of their household or other reasons dare not be in such assemblies.

I have learned from the President of La Tourette, that he saw in Dauphine a Witch who was lying by the side of the fire and was delighted in ecstasis, removing her soul from her body in the house; and because she could not hear anything, she was struck from above by her master with a rod, receiving multiple great blows. To find out if she was dead, he set her most sensitive parts on fire: even with all this, she did not take refuge. Thinking she was dead, the master and the mistress left her lying there. In the morning, they found her lying in her bed. When her master, astonished, asked her what she had had, she cried in her own language, “why has my master beaten me so much?” The master had told his neighbors of what happened, who in turn told him she was a witch. He never stopped to confess the truth to her, that in his mind, she had been in the assembly of Witches.

She also confessed to several evils, which she had committed, and was burned. Inquisitor Jacques Sprenger, having tried several witches, writes that they have confessed that they are delighted in spirit when they want: and when they want, they are also delighted in body. We have yet another recent example which occurred in Bordeaux in the year 1571 when the Witches were persecuted in France: there was an old Witch in Bordeaux who confessed before the judges that she astral projected[11] every week with the others, where there was a big Goat who made them deny God, and promise to serve the Devil, and then each kissed him in shameful parts, and after the dances everyone took powder. So Monsieur Belot Maistre des Prequestes, wanting to prove the truth by the Witch, who was said to have no power if she was not outside the prison, had her widened[12], and then she rubbed herself quite naked with certain grease: and afterwards she collapsed as if she were dead: without any feeling: and five hours later she returned, and standing up told several things from various places that were true.

I know a Count and a Knight of the Order who were present at the trial and went through the experience of seeing the witch in action, and who are still alive. Olaus says that this is very common in the Northern countries, and that the friends of one who delights in ecstasis take care of the body until he returns with great pain[13], and brings back a ring, a letter, or a knife from somewhere or someone that is three hundred leagues away. I learned another judgment while in Nantes in the year 1549, which was no less strange, of seven sorcerers, who said in the presence of several people that they would bring news within an hour, of what was done ten leagues away. Suddenly they all fell, and remained [unresponsive for] about three hours: then they got up, and brought back what they wanted to the whole city of Nantes, and further around, having noticed the places, actions, people, and everything right away was true. After having been accused, and convicted of several evil spells, they were all burned.

One could say, perhaps, that the soul is not delighted into astral projection, and that it is only a vision and an illusion made by the means of the Devil: but the effects show the opposite. We had to put people to sleep with the Mandrake, and other narcotic drinks, so that the person will seem dead. Nevertheless there are some that we put to sleep so well, that they no longer wake up, and the others having taken such drinks sometimes sleep three or four days without awakening, as is done in Turkey for those who are to be castrated, and was practiced in a Gascon from the lower Languedoc being a slave, who has since been redeemed.[14]

[1] The literal translation for this line is ‘the transport of witches in body and soul.’ From the context of the passage, I have deemed that he is trying to convey the witches’ abilities to remove the soul from the body; astral projection is the closest term I can think of to describe this in modern times. It soon uses the term ‘ecstasis,’ which in this context means "to be or stand outside oneself, a removal to elsewhere." The soul separate from the body.

[2] This could be Death is either amusing, pleasant, or joking. The French word ‘plaisante’ could mean any of these.

[3] The only chapter 8 in this series is on what witches can do and if they can kill. I’m not sure if this passage is referencing that chapter, or if the men mentioned previously wrote their own book and it’s a passage from that.

[4] Original text: ‘raisonnable.’ Can mean reasonable, sane, conceivable.

[5] The four humors (fluid substances) of the body were blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. You may have heard the humors in the context of something like ‘balancing your humors.’

[6] From now on, I’ll be using the term ecstasis instead of astral projection.

[7] It was difficult to make out what this name was. The letters Ii and the letters Jj are the same in old print. In old French, many words had a y instead of an i. For example, what is now ‘vrai’ used to be spelled ‘vray.’

[8] I honestly have no idea what Bodin is trying to convey here. The most I could find about blons is that he might be talking about people who are from the municipality of Blons in Austria. I don’t have enough context or knowledge to say for sure what he meant here.

[9] I think he’s referencing another book here, but I don’t know which one.

[10] To summarize, he said he had evidence that basically somebody was a witch, and to prove he wasn’t lying, he astral projected and got recent news stories from different countries, and then returned to his body and told people these new stories. When the people double checked, it turns out the news he shared was accurate.

[11] It doesn’t actually specify if it is astral projection or a supernatural entity moving her physical body.

[12] I don’t know if widening her is meant in a sexual context or not. If not, I have no clue what he meant.

[13] Could also be suffering or sorrow instead of pain.

[14] I personally don’t have the historical context to further understand or explain this. If this part interests you, I’d highly suggest doing some outside research on the topic.


	6. VI.	On Lycanthropy and if the Spirits can make people beautiful.

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	7. VII.	If witches copulate with demons

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	8. VIII.	If witches can send diseases, sterility, hail, and tempests, and if they can kill people and beasts.

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End file.
